So far, Hugs has had kids climb onto him, carried Zoraline 🦇 on his back while she slept, and ripped an animated skeleton in half. There have been no other badgers.
Summary of episode 3.
Going to Pondside
Mabel 🐭, Helga 🐸, and the gang head to Pondside to see the aftermath of Maha's attack. They chat about their pasts as they walk over.1
Pondside is destroyed. No one is left. Footprints suggest that everyone fled to Haymeadow.
Squirrels
They spot two squirrels digging in the ruins and the gang eavesdrops on them:
- Maha attacked another place recently.
- Someone called Cruelclaw assigned them to this job.
- Their colleagues are going to Three Trees City.
The gang fights off the squirrels and their skeleton army. They decide to head to Three Trees City to track down those squirrels and investigate Cruelclaw.
Before leaving, Helga takes an etched copper orb and a wand from the ruins of her grandparents' home. This feels like foreshadowing.
Three Trees City
The gang arrives by river boat. Mabel and Finneas 🐰 ask around if anyone has seen those two squirrel necromancers but stumble upon a boisterous otter.
The otter's also looking for someone. Unknown species, blue cloak, and… tattoos? What are tattoos?
Helga shows him a drawing of a vision she had of a fox that matches his description. Things get tense when the otter starts hassling her for more information and Mabel steps in.
Flood
Before the altercation gets worse, panic erupts at the docks as the tide rises absurdly fast.
The Flood Gar, a Calamity Beast, arrives, carrying in a huge wave. Together with the otter, the current sweeps the gang away from Three Trees City. They climb out of the water into a damp cave, face to face with a bunch of rats that don't welcome them.
[1] Small talk
- Helga was born near Three Tree City and later moved to Pondside. She got along well with her grandparents but not the rest of her family. She learned magic under King Glarb until she got kicked for a "mistake".
- Finneas is a farmer from a long lineage of farmers. This is his first time leaving Goodhill.
- Gev 🦎 and Hugs 🦡 once travelled past the Outer Woods. Gev claims they fought squirrel necromancers, but he's probably masking a traumatic experience.
"He's not alone. There's a lizardfolk, with green and black scales, and yellow eyes. And another small creature who's hard to see. A dark cloud follows them."
He looks like an American badger in one art and a European badger in the other. I cannot stand for this discrepancy!
Mabel and her friends investigate the ruins of Pondside, and find a new ally—along with a few new enemies.
Summary of episode 2.
Helga wakes up
Helga drifts in and out of consciousness. She dreams of Maha, the Night Owl attacking various places, and in each place was a weasel in a red hood. When she wakes up, she finds herself in Mabel's home. She tells her story to Mabel and the mayor: the visions, Maha's attack on Pondside, coming over to get help. Mabel believes her and invites her to join her birthday party outside, reassuring her.
Mabel grabs Cragflame
While at the party, Mabel privately considers going to Pondside to help. She decides to bring out her family heirloom, Cragflame, after all. When she picks it up, it glows like fire, which she's never seen it do.
The mayor gives a toast to Mabel, famed in Goodhill for her courage, then Mabel herself gives a speech. She commends Helga's bravery for coming to warn of Maha. She holds up Cragflame, to the awe of the crowd, and calls on the townsfolk to join her in an aid mission to Pondside. Several volunteer. The audience is briefly stunned, but gradually start cheering.
Who's coming?
- Helga
- Finneas, rabbit
- Hugs, badger
- Gev, lizard
- Zoraline, bat
Bedtime
Mabel and her family prepare for her departure and go to bed. She'll leave in the morning.
Bonus exposition
- Long ago, the Calamity Beasts were more active in Valley
- The animals of Valley learned magic and wielded swords to fight them off
- Notably, Lily of the Valley, wielder of Cragflame
Cragflame
- Lily of the Valley wielded this sword
- Crafted from the fang of a Calamity Beast
- Vaporizes wielders that don't deserve to hold it
Mabel chewed pensively, then swallowed. "Everything is so peaceful here, but it feels fragile. As if a storm is about to break."
Here's a summary.
Helga
Helga is a frog artist who gets a vision of the Sun Hawk, a Calamity Beast. As she runs off to report her vision, warning bells ring and Maha, the Night Owl, attacks Pondside village. Helga survives the attack and flees, heading to the nearest village to warn them of Maha's arrival.
Mabel
Mabel (the lead mouse) and her family are preparing for her birthday party. The nosy rabbit mayor prods her about bringing out her precious family heirloom (presumably Cragflame), but she refuses. Their conversation is interrupted when an exhausted frog shows up in town. The frog mentions an attack by a Calamity Beast, then collapses, unconscious. While rescuing the frog, Mabel wonders how she'll bring this up to her family.
Ral
On Ravnica, Ral is lying in bed, malding about Jace and what he did on Thunder Junction. Ral wants to kill him. With a clue from the Wanderer, he follows Jace's trail and planeswalks away. When he lands, he is shocked to find out he's been transformed into a literal otter.
"I'm going to kill him!" Ral shouted, his eyes filling with lightning as he shook his paw at the sky.
While Helga tries to warn everyone of the coming danger, Goodhill throws Mabel a birthday party.
YES I really need the sixth circle station in Manhattan thank you
My unsubstantiated guess is that it's 2B, to work with the new booster pack structure. Mark my words in spoiler season.
Magic R&D coming out of hibernation to convince me to play this set. I've straight up not cared about anything else from the past few years.
Games I know of on Android:
- Ganz Schön Clever — Digital adaptation of a board game. It's like bingo except you roll dice and there's actual skill involved.
- Knotwords — Crosswords but instead of word clues, each region of the board indicates what letters appear there.
- Threes — 2048 was a ripoff of 1024, and 1024 was a ripoff of Threes. Threes is the OG.
- Sagrada — Digital adaptation of a board game. Build a stained glass window by rolling dice and placing them on your board in the right pattern.
- Simon Tatham's Puzzles — Big compilation of various puzzle types.
- Handshakes (by Pet Pumpkin) — "Solo co-op" sokoban puzzle where you try to get two guys to shake hands.
- inbento — Assemble lunch boxes by sliding tiles around to match the reference picture.
I'll back up June. I was "that's pretty nice" on Undertale but wasn't nearly as positive on it as its fandom was. I loved Inscryption. It's not meta like Undertale, but it does have occasional fourth wall breaks, which is part of its game-within-a-game fiction.
Yes, Maddy is trans. This is both from word of god and a hint in the background of a piece of art in-game.
Ultimate Chicken Horse $5.24 (65% off, matching the all-time low)
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Assault Android Cactus $4.99 (75% off, matching the all-time low)
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Overcooked! 2 $6.24 (75% off, matching the all-time low)
Chaotic co-op cooking, local or online. Complete restaurant orders quickly in increasingly absurd scenarios. Cook in a haunted kitchen, above a mineshaft, in the middle of the highway, or on a burning hot air balloon that crashes into another restaurant! This is the kind of game that people joke will ruin friendships.
Gato Roboto $1.99 (75% off, matching the all-time low)
Polished metroidvania with great monochrome pixel art. You are a cat piloting a robot suit. It only lasts a few hours, but they're hours well spent.
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A little guy in a green tunic picks up a sword and goes on an adventure, but the game is in an unknown language and you only have a few pages of the manual. It's like a metroidvania but your progress is based on knowledge.
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You find an old, abandoned video game and load it up. It's an atmospheric, spooky card game, hiding layers of secrets for you to discover. The less you know before starting the game, the better your experience will be.
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Explore a remarkably authentic simulation of the 1999 World Wide Web as a moderator of a Geocities-like website hub. Rather than just being a joke about the corny retro graphics, it's a heartfelt funeral for that era of the internet.